About Me
- The Miller family
- I am just a mom: a mom of three kids and one of them is hearing impaired. We are a busy family and I am a very busy mom. I want my hearing impaired daughter, Brooke, to have every advantage so I try to incorporate as many lessons and strategies into our every day life. Most of the teaching I do with Brooke is incorporated into our daily routines and parent-directed play. This blog will include some of our formal lessons but mostly it will be learning to listen in the everyday.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Kindergarten Sight Words
I started a new blog to catalog and share the different ways we practice our kindergarten sight words. Check it out here if you are interested!
Sunday, September 11, 2011
try a whisper
If Brooke seems to be "tuning me out" during one of our lessons or while listening to a book as I read, I try whispering the same thing. The change in my tone and volume usually attracts her attention and helps to refocus her listening.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Auditory Memory
This week Brooke and I are working on auditory memory. Auditory memory is the ability to remember words, numbers, phrases that you hear. Using the game Cariboo as an incentive, I gave Brooke a series of random words for her to listen and repeat.
This is how we do it:
1. I will give Brooke 4 words that she knows such as elephant, umbrella, hat, shoe. Once she repeats them to me in the correct order, she can pick a card and use the key to open the door in the game.
2. We started with 5 words (which I thought she could do) but she was really struggling with it. Since I want her to feel successful, I dropped down to 4 words.
This is how we do it:
1. I will give Brooke 4 words that she knows such as elephant, umbrella, hat, shoe. Once she repeats them to me in the correct order, she can pick a card and use the key to open the door in the game.
2. We started with 5 words (which I thought she could do) but she was really struggling with it. Since I want her to feel successful, I dropped down to 4 words.
3. Here are a few other lists:
football, tree, orange, ice cream
bee, truck, boat, soccer
rainbow, sun, mailman, fox
book, flower, duck, apple
4. You can play this with any game you like. Before your child's turn, just ask her to repeat a list of words.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Listening and Coloring
I printed a coloring sheet from the 4-H cloverbuds activity I gave Brooke some directions with 3-4 critical elements for coloring the sheet such as:
5. Color the pool toy on the top of the pile purple.
1. Color the man's hat red. (Brooke started to color the boy's hat so I had to stop her and we talked about the man and the boy)
2. Color the boy's hat yellow
3. Color the canoe green with orange polka dots. (Brooke needed help with "What is a canoe?"
4. Color the car's headlights yellow
3. Color the canoe green with orange polka dots. (Brooke needed help with "What is a canoe?"
4. Color the car's headlights yellow
5. Color the pool toy on the top of the pile purple.
6. Make a little smoke coming out of the back of the car (I didn't think she would get this one but she pleasantly surprised me)
7. Write your name on the top of the page
8. Draw a sun in the top corner of the page
9. Color the car your favorite color and color the tires black (She did the tires first and then made the car a rainbow of colors)
10. Draw a smiley face on the front door of the car (She asked "What is a front door?" and then drew the smiley face)
Since she didn't like my color choices very much, we printed another copy and she told me how to color it. From memory, she had me color the same things but I noticed some vocabulary words what we need to work on:
1. She called the man a "boy"
2. She didn't know the name of the door handle but was able to describe that we "push it to get into the car"
3. She called the headlights, "lights"
4. She called the tires, "wheels"
5. The woman was a "girl"
6. She didn't know the name of the "fender"
7. She called the canoe a "boat"
So, we will work on some "car parts" as vocabulary this week! I learned a lot about her sentences and vocabulary from this activity. Her best direction was: "Color the boat brown with blue polkadots" which is 4 critical elements - I was impressed
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Extending Vocabulary
One piece of advice we received during our visit to Chapel Hill on Monday was to work on extending Brooke's vocabulary. For example she know the word "same" but doesn't understand the word "alike". She uses "big" and "small" really well but needs to add some more synonyms for those words. So we have been trying a few new things around here that incorporate into our daily life. With a little focus by me, we are extending her vocabulary.
1. Use active listening to show your child you are listening; create opportunities for your child to comment and add to your thoughts. Create pockets of time in which you really talk with your child. When Brooke brings up and idea or topic, I try to keep the conversation going for a few minutes and include her brother and sister. She loves to talk about things so she really enjoys these conversations.
2. Restate what your child says, using slightly more advanced, new vocabulary. For example, if she says, "Did you see that house by the water? It was big!" respond by saying, "I did- the cabin next to the creek was gigantic!"
3. As your child talks, ask "how" and "why" questions to help her extend and analyze her thoughts. Wonder out loud, for example, how the cabin was build or why the family chose to build it on the creek. Doing so allows your child to use new vocabulary to talk about abstract thoughts, rather than simply talking about the concrete objects that are right in front of her.
The more Brooke is able to hear and understand, the more likely she will begin to use the new words in her vocabulary.
1. Use active listening to show your child you are listening; create opportunities for your child to comment and add to your thoughts. Create pockets of time in which you really talk with your child. When Brooke brings up and idea or topic, I try to keep the conversation going for a few minutes and include her brother and sister. She loves to talk about things so she really enjoys these conversations.
2. Restate what your child says, using slightly more advanced, new vocabulary. For example, if she says, "Did you see that house by the water? It was big!" respond by saying, "I did- the cabin next to the creek was gigantic!"
3. As your child talks, ask "how" and "why" questions to help her extend and analyze her thoughts. Wonder out loud, for example, how the cabin was build or why the family chose to build it on the creek. Doing so allows your child to use new vocabulary to talk about abstract thoughts, rather than simply talking about the concrete objects that are right in front of her.
The more Brooke is able to hear and understand, the more likely she will begin to use the new words in her vocabulary.
Monday, July 18, 2011
Our appointments
Brooke had an audiology appointment today at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Though it is a four hour drive from our home, the care we receive is well worth the trip.
To begin our appointment Brooke goes into the testing booth. It is really small sound-proof room with all of the equipment needed to test Brooke's hearing.
Without her hearing aids, Brooke listens for sounds that come through those blue and red wires clipped to the back of her dress. The tubes from the wires are placed into her ears through her ear molds. The therapist wears headphone and can hear the audiologist who sits in the booth through the window. The audiologist plays "beeps" and Brooke places a token into the pig when she hears the sound. The "beeps" are played along different frequencies until she hears it and responds.
Then we move into another room for her hearing aids to be programed. The audiologist uses Brooke's responses from the testing booth and the computer will programs her hearing aids to her exact needs.
This is Brooke with Paula, our audiologist. Paula has taken exceptional care of us over the last 3 years.
To begin our appointment Brooke goes into the testing booth. It is really small sound-proof room with all of the equipment needed to test Brooke's hearing.
Without her hearing aids, Brooke listens for sounds that come through those blue and red wires clipped to the back of her dress. The tubes from the wires are placed into her ears through her ear molds. The therapist wears headphone and can hear the audiologist who sits in the booth through the window. The audiologist plays "beeps" and Brooke places a token into the pig when she hears the sound. The "beeps" are played along different frequencies until she hears it and responds.
Then we move into another room for her hearing aids to be programed. The audiologist uses Brooke's responses from the testing booth and the computer will programs her hearing aids to her exact needs.
This is Brooke with Paula, our audiologist. Paula has taken exceptional care of us over the last 3 years.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
My Special Family
"God doesn't give children with special needs to strong people; He gives children with special needs to ordinary, weak people and then gives them strength. Raising a child with special needs doesn't TAKE a special family, it MAKES a family special." - found this on a friend's facebook status and love it!
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